Wipro acquires minority stake in Opera Solutions for $30 m

Wipro, India’s third-largest information technology services company, has signed an agreement to acquire a minority stake in Opera Solutions, a global big data and analytics company, for about $30 million (Rs 162 crore). While the company did not disclose the stake it had acquired, those in the know said it could be less than 10 per cent. This is Bangalore-based Wipro’s second investment in the analytics segment. In April 2012, it had acquired Australia-based Promax Application Group for A$35 million (about $36.5 million, or Rs 192 crore).

Founded in 2004 by Arnab Gupta, a former consultant with A T Kearney and McKinsey, the New Jersey-headquartered Opera Solutions is said to be one of the biggest companies in the predictive data analytics space, with revenues of about $100 million. In 2011, the company received $84 million in funding from Silver Lake Sumeru, Accel-KKR, Invus Financial Advisors, JGE Capital Management and Tola Capital. “This strategic partnership with Opera Solutions will help us further extend our leadership in the big data analytics space, as it combines Opera Solutions’ machine learning expertise, pre-discovered predictive signals and algorithms with Wipro’s domain and technology expertise to create industry-specific big data analytics solutions,” said K R Sanjiv, senior vice-president and global head (analytics and information management), Wipro.

Arnab Gupta, chief executive of Opera Solutions, said, “Both Wipro and we see a great fit between Wipro’s ability to deliver end-to-end services and Opera Solutions’ ability to scale and industrialise big data science. And, by partnering a global organisation with a broad, blue-chip client roster, we greatly enhance our ability to capitalise on the exploding demand for big data science solutions.” Wipro said Opera Solutions specialised in segments ranging from machine learning to big data flows to extract predictive patterns, or ‘signals’. The company offers a range of solutions that turn these signals into prescriptive actions and improve the productivity and profits of clients.